III.

Outside Palestine

Since the 19th century extensive investigations have been carried out throughout the Middle East, as well as in Greece and Italy, that have made the larger world of the Bible living and real. During a series of expeditions by the British in the mid-19th century, the great library of the 7th-century bc Assyrian king Ashurbanipal was uncovered at the site of ancient Nineveh (near modern Mosul, Iraq). In this library were found tablets with the Babylonian stories of creation and the flood, a discovery that set the biblical accounts in Genesis in a wholly new light. Cuneiform documents from ancient Mari (modern Tell Hariri) in western Syria have clarified the origins of Old Testament prophecy, the identification of place names, and the concept of tribal nomadism. The tablets of ancient Nuzi (modern Yorgham Tepe) in northern Iraq have provided scholars with information concerning legal customs of the 15th century bc, customs with parallels in the patriarchal narratives. Letters from Canaanite kings to their Egyptian overlords, found at Tall al ‘Amārinah in Egypt, have shed light on the political situation in Palestine about 100 years before the Israelite conquest. Numerous law codes from the libraries of great Assyrian and Babylonian kings have provided analogies and parallels to the law codes of the Old Testament.

From 1929 to the present, excavations by the French at Ra’s Shamrah (ancient Ugarit) in western Syria have produced thousands of tablets belonging to the period between 1400 and 1200 bc, written in Ugaritic (see Semitic Languages). Many of these are literary in character, describing the exploits of the gods of the Canaanite religion, among them the storm deity Baal (title of Hadad) mentioned frequently in the Old Testament. Moreover, the poetry of Ugarit has strong affinities with that of the Bible. They share much in the way of vocabulary, structure, and the use of figures of speech and other literary devices.

In 1945, at ancient Naj‘Ḩammādī in Upper Egypt, some 50 Gnostic writings in Coptic were discovered. They could be dated to the 4th century ad, but investigation of their character and content showed that they were translations of Greek works of perhaps the 2nd century, thus placing them among the earliest known sources for Gnostic Christianity. These writings have proved invaluable for understanding the evolution of Christianity in Egypt, especially in its nonorthodox forms. The complete Naj‘Ḩammādī collection was published in English in 1977. See Gnosticism.

Since 1964, an Italian expedition under the direction of Paolo Matthiae has exposed at ancient Ebla (modern Tell Mardīkh), in central Syria, royal palaces, a monumental city gate, rampart, temples, and private houses. From 1974 to 1976, thousands of tablets and fragments of tablets belonging to the early Bronze Age (perhaps c. 2500 bc) were found. The tablets are written in cuneiform and represent two languages. The first is Sumerian, for which cuneiform was devised, and the second is Semitic, the actual language of the Eblaites and of many other peoples scattered throughout the Middle East. These texts have shed new light on commerce and culture in 3rd-millennium Syria and supplied considerable information about both languages at this stage of their evolution. In 1979 the statue of a Syrian king was found at Al Fakhkhārīyah in the Habur region of Syria. The statue, inscribed in Assyrian and Aramaic and dated around 1000 bc, could be of the greatest value for linguists, especially Aramaists, as this is one of the longest inscriptions of such an early date in that language. Having a parallel text in Assyrian enhances its value.

See also Archaeology; Palestine.